TRANSCRIPT

This is a great opportunity to share some truths. I think I knew I was supposed to be a writer when I was a little kid. My dad used to play cricket—we were living in Ireland and England—and I had this little notepad. When we’d drive to and from the cricket matches or when we were out for a picnic or wherever we were going, I would write little poems or stories in the notepad in the backseat of the car.

I had no inhibitions. I wasn't really afraid. I think fear is something that creeps in when we’re adults and it's usually related back to a moment where everything changes. I mean, that's what we were talking about: the inciting incident. So when was the inciting incident for my fear? I entered this poetry and art competition when I was a little kid and don’t tell anybody, but I can’t draw and I certainly can't paint. That’s not my thing. I can paint with words! It was really sad though, because my teacher made fun of me. I remember her saying that my story was great but my artwork wasn't good, and so that's why I couldn't win the competition. And the lesson here, she said for all the kids, or at least the way I remember it, was that we had to be good all-rounders in life. We couldn't focus on one thing. I don't think that's true if you’re going to be a writer. The sad response I had to that inciting incident was that I went home and I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell my mom, I didn't tell my dad, I didn't tell our standard poodle whom I told everything to. I took my little notepad and I put it in the back of the drawer of my dressing table and I didn't write again for 20 years. I mean, I wrote papers in school, I was resistant to creative writing classes, but I gave up because when somebody challenged me, I took that so much to heart that I ceased to believe in myself and interestingly enough, that is the role of what I call the “dilemma” in a story.

You've been invited on a journey or you’ve been invited to respond to something and then later, around the 17-minute point, you have this dilemma: Shall I stay? Shall I go? Is this journey for me? Is it not? If the protagonist answers “no,” the story’s over, and it was for me for a long time as a writer. But if the protagonist is willing to say, “Okay, I'm going to respond to this second invitation. I feel the need to go,” and if something happens—that's what we’re going to call “crossing the threshold”—if something happens that makes it impossible for me to say no and I say, “Yes, I want to go on this journey and I'm willing to embrace whatever it holds,” then the story can continue. Sadly, for me, the fears that were invoked in my classroom as a little kid made me say no to the journey of becoming a writer, and it took many friends and much encouragement and many, many years for me to find my way back to it. So if you're feeling like you don't have what it takes, or if you’ve been discouraged in the past, I want you to get to the root of that limiting belief, as my friend Jackie Knechtel likes to say, and I want you to just root it out. Tell yourself, “No, I can do this. I can respond to the invitation. I can respond to the quest and I'm going to go forward!” because if you don't, who will? The story invited you. The real question now is: will you go or will you stay? and understanding that allows you to identify with your protagonist, and see that moment of reckoning you have to create for them in the story.

Video